Skull and Shackles

Captain's Log 2

It was a quick scrap, but weapons were drawn and blood flowed before one of the pirates screeched about not wanting to get keel-hauled – and who can blame her. The four of us – Feruzi, Mr. Hands, Reiko, and I – fought together against the bastards until they relented and skulked away. We exchanged idle threats, then went to work.

I felt well enough to not work quite so diligently, so I wandered belowdecks when time allowed and found the quartermaster Grok. She had my axes and armor in a pile, and I asked her what it would take to get them back. She wanted payment in the form of non-rum booze. No clue where I’m going to find such a thing. This may require another angle.

Not much to say about the Bloody Hour. I’d like to say I handled myself with as much dignity as being lashed to the mast to have your back flayed open allows, but all I really saved was my shirt, which I handed to Sandara before submitting myself to the punishment. I have this to say about Scourge – his name is well-earned. I lost consciousness about halfway through.

I was very surprised to awake that very night, being tended by Sandara, who gave credit to Besmara. I’d never been healed before like that. It was intriguing and humbling and terrifying and a bunch of other -ings that I don’t have time to properly record here. Suffice it to say that I was glad to have somehow landed on this woman’s good side. For what the Black Queen giveth…

Ruse berated me severely for my foolishness, and I felt a little guilty. She feels that she owes me a life debt, and here I nearly get myself killed for being stubborn and stupid about it. I’m going to have to lay low for her sake at the least. I wrapped my back in strips of linen and got as comfortable as I could in a hammock with open wounds.

Day 3

I noticed – with no little amount of irritation – that Mr. Hands and Feruzi had both somehow managed to get their belongings back from Grok. I spent the evening quietly conversing with Sandara. We happened to overhear Ruse speaking with a halfling woman called Rosie Cusswell about speaking with the quartermaster. The latter wanted her fiddle back, but had spoken in anger to Grok when first she’d attempted to barter/reason with her. It came up that the quartermaster is superstitious, and Sandara said that she’d convinced the half-orc that her stuff was – and I quote – “cuuuuuuursed.” I didn’t think that would work twice, but it did give me an idea.

Day 4

My tale of phantom limbs haunting the blades that had taken them from honest sailors seemed to do the trick. Grok was sufficiently impressed that she returned all of my stuff – just in case.

Mid-morning a cry of alarm from a sailor called Jack Scrimshaw – a man with the most outlandish theories surrounding the Eye of Abendego – alerted everyone to trouble. He’d been working the bilges and reported to Mr. Plugg about something having leapt out of the muck and bitten him. He was sent to the ship’s surgeon – Quarne by name, I’ll have to remember that – and the first mate ordered us (huh, how strange that Mr. Hands and Reiko have naturally become part of “us”) down to the bilges to deal with the threat…